Applications and affiliates

Admin → Affiliate → Applications (/admin/affiliate/application) is where you decide who is an affiliate. It lists everyone who has a standing in the Affiliate Program — members waiting for a decision, approved affiliates and members you turned down — and it is the only screen that changes that standing. Programs, applications and personal codes explains what the standing means; this page is how to work the screen.

It matters only while Require Affiliate Applications is on. With the switch off, every member is an affiliate and nobody can apply, so the screen shows "Applications are off" and a link to Settings above an empty queue. Rows that exist from earlier come back into force when you switch it on again.

What the table shows

The screen opens on the members who are waiting, oldest first, so the member who has waited longest is the next one to decide. The date it sorts on is when the member first applied: a member who applies again after a rejection re-opens the same application and keeps that first date, so they can sit near the top of the queue with an old date. Clear the Status filter to see everyone.

Deciding

• A reason is required to reject or revoke, up to 500 characters. It is the text the member reads, so write it for them. Approving needs no reason, and a note you do leave is kept on the application but is not what the member's approval message says.
• To decide several at once, tick the rows and use Approve selected or Reject selected. One reason covers the whole selection, and one request decides up to 100 applications.
• A decision that does not change the status (approving someone who is already approved) sends no second notification.
• The decision is stamped with the admin who made it and the time. The Reviewed column shows the date; the admin is kept on the application but is not shown on this screen. A member who applies again after a rejection re-opens the same application as waiting, and the earlier verdict — the note, the time and the admin — is cleared with it.

Adding an affiliate by hand

Use the table's create button, which opens Add an affiliate: choose the member and optionally leave a note. The member becomes an approved affiliate without an application and receives the notification "You are an approved affiliate" with a link to their dashboard, where they can choose a personal code.

Use it to recruit by hand, and to carry over the people who earn today before you switch applications on — see the warning in Programs, applications and personal codes. A member who already has a standing is moved to approved rather than getting a second row.

Deleting

Delete on a row, or Delete Selected for several, removes the standing for good. The member returns to being a general member with no verdict on file: they can apply from scratch, and their personal code is freed for anyone else. Nobody is notified.

Deleting is how you free a revoked affiliate's code from this screen. Their referrals, the tree and every reward they earned are untouched: a standing is a row of its own and nothing cascades from it.

Who can do what

These are the referral keys, not new ones: whoever works the referral approval queue already works this one. The one exception is the member list in Add an affiliate, which is the platform's user list and needs view.user as well. See Roles and permissions.

Every user whose role includes edit.affiliate.referral gets a notification, "New affiliate application", each time a member applies. The list of recipients is remembered for a minute, so a role edit takes about that long to reach it.

When the queue looks wrong

• Empty, and members say they applied. Check Require Affiliate Applications on Settings. With it off the application is refused with "The Affiliate Program is open to every member" and nothing is filed.
• A member says their code does not work. Find them in the table. A code resolves only while the status is APPROVED; a waiting, rejected or revoked member's code does nothing. A code that was never saved is not in the Referral code column.
• A member cannot choose a code. Only an approved affiliate can. With applications off, any signed-in member can.
• You approved someone and their earnings did not change. Approval switches which program their referrals pay under from the next transaction on. The conditions that are paid at an event are not back-paid for what happened while they were not an affiliate. A condition on a schedule catches up on the next hourly run, for its current and previous period (a one-time scheduled condition: for everything to date), so look again after the hour.